Television "Lost" Illusions: The Untold Story of the Hit Show’s Poisonous (and Racist) Culture (Vanity Fair)

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

I never really thought very highly of "Lost" and checked out partway through the second season, but this article is absolutely damning.

 

‘Lost’ Illusions: The Untold Story of the Hit Show’s Poisonous Culture | Vanity Fair

WWW.VANITYFAIR.COM

---

It was a groundbreaking smash, but things got so toxic behind the scenes that even co-showrunner Damon Lindelof now says: “I failed.” A powerful excerpt from the new book ‘Burn It Down.’

 

Quote

 

Based on conversations with more than a dozen people who worked on Lost in various capacities, it’s clear that the landmark series played right into Hollywood’s most long-standing patterns, in which auteurs wield enormous power with very little oversight. Later, you will hear from Lindelof and Cuse at length regarding the allegations and issues their former colleagues raised with me. I talked to people across all six seasons, half of whom were people of color and more than half of whom were women. Every person I spoke with is justifiably proud of the work they did on the drama, but by all accounts, they worked very hard on a job that could be quite grueling. And scarring.

 

“All I wanted to do was write some really cool episodes of a cool show. That was an impossibility on that staff,” said Monica Owusu-Breen, who worked on Lost’s third season. “There was no way to navigate that situation. Part of it was they really didn’t like their characters of color. When you have to go home and cry for an hour before you can see your kids because you have to excise all the stress you’ve been holding in, you’re not going to write anything good after that.”

 

 

[Kal-El814]

Just read this and was about to post it. So gross.

[skillzdadirecta]

Tagged for later.

[GeneticBlueprint]

That's a really long article. Wouldn't be able to work through that quickly. But I am curious about the main points around this claim:

 

Quote

Part of it was they really didn’t like their characters of color.

 

Any high level overview on that?

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

18 minutes ago, GeneticBlueprint said:

Any high level overview on that?

 

In summary: the non-Caucasian characters were given the short end of the narrative stick relative to their melanin-challenged counterparts.

[Ghost_MH]

9 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

In summary: the non-Caucasian characters were given the short end of the narrative stick relative to their melanin-challenged counterparts.

 

This bit is a great example...

 

Quote

He said Cuse and Lindelof told him that the episode was not about his character. “ ‘Cool, it’s not about me. I’m not making it about me,’ ” he remembered replying. “ ‘I just can’t have this father not care about his son. Could we put in some more lines that show he cares about his son?’ They didn’t. I ad-libbed some lines. I didn’t give a shit at that point.” Weeks later, he got a revised script—the flashbacks were now about Michael’s pre-island life. Perrineau had two days to shoot those scenes, as opposed to the several days devoted to the Sawyer flashbacks. “It was 14-hour, 18-hour days. I was like, ‘If you think I’m gonna fuck this up, I’m not. I’m gonna be really good.’ But I felt like suddenly they were mad at me,” Perrineau said.

 

As it turned out, soon enough, the problems Perrineau had—with that script and with the writing for his character—were no longer issues he had to contend with. A couple of weeks before shooting began on the second-season finale, Perrineau said, Cuse told him his character would not be returning. Perrineau told me he was taken aback and questioned Cuse about this, and the showrunner said he did not know if Michael would ever come back.

 

Complained that he didn't want to ignore his missing son, was offered a new script but had to shoot it in 14-18hr long days. Still nailed it. Was fired.

[Guest]

Quote

When someone on staff was adopting an Asian child, one person said to another writer that “no grandparent wants a slanty-eyed grandchild.”

When actor Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje’s picture was on the writers room table, someone was told to remove their nearby wallet “before he steals it.”

 

When Owusu-Breen and others were riding in a van on a trip, in answer to a question about the luggage, one writer—using a Yiddish word—said, “Let the schvartze take it.”

 

The only Asian American writer was called Korean, as in, “Korean, take the board.”

 

When a woman entered the writers room carrying a binder, two sources said, a male writer asked her what it was. She said it was the HR manual for the studio, and he responded, “Why don’t you take off your top and tell us about it?”

 

There was apparently some discomfort around the show’s cleaning staff using the bathroom in the Lost offices, and there were “jokes” about “putting up a Whites Only sign.”

 

Finally, when Perrineau’s Lost departure came up, Lindelof said, according to multiple sources, that the actor “called me racist, so I fired his ass.”

I really have a hard time getting along with the sorts of dudes who think this stuff is funny. I think we’ve all known some at various points in our lives. 
 

But yeah, Cuse has long been known the be pretty awful to work for, and Lindelof seems to have made efforts in this second phase of his career to not be such a dumpster fire of a human. Reading their two responses towards the end of the article pretty well highlights this IMO.

[Kal-El814]

1 hour ago, sblfilms said:

I really have a hard time getting along with the sorts of dudes who think this stuff is funny. I think we’ve all known some at various points in our lives. 
 

But yeah, Cuse has long been known the be pretty awful to work for, and Lindelof seems to have made efforts in this second phase of his career to not be such a dumpster fire of a human. Reading their two responses towards the end of the article pretty well highlights this IMO.

 

I appreciated that Lindelof created a false dichotomy of brilliance / kindness and that the author called out the notion that it's a bullshit premise.

[skillzdadirecta]

Holy shit this article tracks with all the shit that I had been hearing not only about what was going on on THIS show but others as well. A friend of mine worked on a show around the same that took place in New Orleans, Post Katrina and a scene that involved extras was reshot to include more white extras (in a black neighborhood) because they wanted the audience "to care about what happened in that neighborhood", the implication being nobody would care if the predominately black neighborhood was actually predominately black. It was experiences like this that led this particular friend, who was the most successful amongst my friend group in Hollywood at the time to quit the business all together, go back to school and get his law degree. He's now a law professor who specializes in racism in the Justice System. Hollywood is fucked up yo... especially these non-diverse writer's rooms. It's gotten better for sure in the last decade, but there IS a sense that we're swing back in the other direction with all of the anti-woke shit.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

28 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

 A friend of mine worked on a show around the same that took place in New Orleans, Post Katrina and a scene that involved extras was reshot to include more white extras (in a black neighborhood) because they wanted the audience "to care about what happened in that neighborhood", the implication being nobody would care if the predominately black neighborhood was actually predominately black. 

 

Would this happen to be the show?

 

Treme | Official Website for the HBO Series | HBO.com

WWW.HBO.COM

---

The official website for From the creators of The Wire(R) comes this series set in one of New Orleans' oldest neighborhoods in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. on HBO, featuring interviews, schedule...

 

[Keyser_Soze]

This was never a good show and I only watched it staring with the later seasons to annoy my friends.

[skillzdadirecta]

1 hour ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

 

Would this happen to be the show?

 

Treme | Official Website for the HBO Series | HBO.com

WWW.HBO.COM

---

The official website for From the creators of The Wire(R) comes this series set in one of New Orleans' oldest neighborhoods in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. on HBO, featuring interviews, schedule...

 

No not that one. 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

43 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

No not that one. 

 

Ahhh gotcha!

 

I just assumed that it was Treme because it fit the description nearly perfectly!

[skillzdadirecta]

It was a short lived  Fox show that ended after 2, 3 seasons? Scarred my friend right out of the business.  I finished reading the article and it was very well written.  I have a ton of thoughts after reading it that I'll share later. I will say this,  those who have heard me talk about what the Island in Lost was originally intended to be will be interested in hearing the writer who told me that is quoted heavily in this article by name. 

[MarSolo]

Oof, that was a rough read. And it totally makes sense in hindsight that’s what was going on behind the scenes.

[Fizzzzle]

On 5/31/2023 at 3:17 AM, skillzdadirecta said:

Holy shit this article tracks with all the shit that I had been hearing not only about what was going on on THIS show but others as well. A friend of mine worked on a show around the same that took place in New Orleans, Post Katrina and a scene that involved extras was reshot to include more white extras (in a black neighborhood) because they wanted the audience "to care about what happened in that neighborhood", the implication being nobody would care if the predominately black neighborhood was actually predominately black. It was experiences like this that led this particular friend, who was the most successful amongst my friend group in Hollywood at the time to quit the business all together, go back to school and get his law degree. He's now a law professor who specializes in racism in the Justice System. Hollywood is fucked up yo... especially these non-diverse writer's rooms. It's gotten better for sure in the last decade, but there IS a sense that we're swing back in the other direction with all of the anti-woke shit.

Somehow that reminds me of the tiem the Daily Show said they felt like they had a problem with diversity and they didn't know how to solve it. In that particular case, it wasn't like they were *trying* to be discriminatory. Then, one day the producers had a meeting, realized that almost all of their writers were white men, realized that they almost always hired their writers from their pool of interns, and their pool of interns was almost entirely comprised of white men. Why? because their interns weren't paid, and you pretty much have to come from money to be able to afford an unpaid internship, which mostly narrows your pool down to rich white men.

 

So they decided to start paying their interns. All of the sudden their writer's room wasn't just full of frat bros anymore. I think this happened in like 2015.

[skillzdadirecta]

41 minutes ago, Fizzzzle said:

Somehow that reminds me of the tiem the Daily Show said they felt like they had a problem with diversity and they didn't know how to solve it. In that particular case, it wasn't like they were *trying* to be discriminatory. Then, one day the producers had a meeting, realized that almost all of their writers were white men, realized that they almost always hired their writers from their pool of interns, and their pool of interns was almost entirely comprised of white men. Why? because their interns weren't paid, and you pretty much have to come from money to be able to afford an unpaid internship, which mostly narrows your pool down to rich white men.

 

So they decided to start paying their interns. All of the sudden their writer's room wasn't just full of frat bros anymore. I think this happened in like 2015.

The only internships I took in school were the ones that paid me. Working for free was unthinkable.